Bake sales and meatloaf tales

It's the start of fundraising time in Tennessee. School coupon books will be coming soon and catalogs full of kind of overpriced and underused crud will soon be sent home. Just call me Jennineezer Scrooge. Anyhoo, tomorrow is the first bake sale of the season. The soccer team needs to pay for the fields and refs. And who can refuse cute little middle school soccer players with treats? These are sales that I can deal with because (1)I like to bake and (2)$1 for some treat that will provide a snack for your kids is a deal. I usually make my cookies from scratch. Not a snob, just how I like to do it. But my crazy coupon kid had some, what I've decided to call "newsprint cash", and got me a hard to turn down good deal on Nestle' break and bake cookies. I cut the dough up and attempted to make them into unique and more sellable shapes. Meh. Nothing fantastic looking. One piece of cookie dough I cut into even had a chunk of butter that had not mixed into the dough correctly. It looked interesting after baking...kind of like it had a little accident:



Poor little funny, incontinent cookie. Just in case you are wondering if I phoned the whole bake sale in with premade dough, uh, no. I also made Salted Browned Butter Rice Krispie Treats. My evil friend, J, gave me the recipe. I feel I didn't do them justice, but they sound fancy. As we often say around this house, "That'll do, pig. That'll do." "Babe" movie reference probably lost on 99% my readers. Sorry.

After baking and cleaning and laundry-ing all day, the family headed to church to help with the Open Door meal that serves people of our community. My brother and his wife were going after a call for help had been put out. We felt we couldn't leave them in a pickle. The kids were elated. Interesting fact is this: my kids fight cleaning tooth and nail at our house, but they absolutely LOVE working in the church kitchen. Of course it helps that Richard, our friend who is in charge of the meal and getting people to work it, is a true saint among men. The kids always like to help serve the diners and run the industrial dish washer and partake of the wonderfully pellet-y and crunchy church ice. I love cooking with others and talking with the dinner guests. Although I really wanted to relax in the afternoon and be a slug, as usual I never regret having shown up to the meal. People are so happy for the food. Richard prepared his wife's famous meatloaf and people kept popping their heads in the kitchen door to see if it was indeed what they smelled. One man, who came back for his third plate, said, "May I have some more meatloaf please? I just can't quit that stuff!". How can you refuse?

The kitchens of the world got good use today, I'm sure. Some were used for family meals, some for preparing items to help raise funds. And some provided a good hearty meal and friendly conversation to hungry tummies and empty hearts. And we all left full...one way or another.
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